South African Jazz Cultures: indaba / discussion day
Study Day, University of York, Saturday 20 April 2013
The South African Jazz Cultures indaba / discussion day is an interdisciplinary forum structured around five presentations and a round table. Contributions from academics (Eato, Pyper), filmmakers (Kaganof), heritage practitioners (Temple, Huntley), musicians (Abdul-Rahim, Brubeck, Moholo-Moholo), and Hazel Miller of Ogun Records will invite discussion on a range of issues broadly framed by the idea of South African jazz cultures. The day will bring together thinking on a range of topics including, but not limited to:
- Artistic heritage in post-authoritarian, post-censorship societies
- The artist in exile
- Vernacular intellectuals
- Informal / underground knowledge transfer structures
- Artistic modes of resistance
Rationale | Registration | Programme | Abstracts | Presenters | Subscribe to email list | Directions
To register (free) email jonathan.eato@york.ac.uk
Register before 15 April 2013 to be included in the catering. Late registrations are welcome, but please bring your own lunch as campus food outlets will be closed.
THE TREEHOUSE, BERRICK SAUL BUILDING
[09:00-09:35 registration / coffee]
09:35-09:45 Welcome
09:45-10:45 Presentation and discussion 1: Brett Pyper ‘Listening to jazz in a transitioning South Africa’
10:45-11.30 Presentation and discussion 2: Matthew Temple ‘Hidden Heritages’
[11:30-12:00 coffee]
12:00-13:00 In conversation: Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim and Louis Moholo-Moholo ‘On working with Mbizo Johnny Dyani’
[13:00-14:00 lunch]
MUSIC RESEARCH CENTRE
14:00-15:30 Roundtable: Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim, Darius Brubeck, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Hazel Miller, Brett Pyper, Matthew Temple (facilitator, Jonathan Eato)
[15:30-16:00 coffee]
16:00-17:00 Presentation and discussion 3: Jonathan Eato ‘Unheard Music, Unseen Images: recordings and photographs from the Ian Bruce Huntley archive’
17:00-18:30 Film and closing discussion: Aryan Kaganof 'The Legacy'.
Listening to jazz in a transitioning South Africa (BRETT PYPER)
In South Africa, one of the most striking features of jazz culture lies, beyond the presence of global musical commodity and performance culture in the formal market and public sphere, in the rich social life of the music in grassroots township settings, where jazz has been appropriated and reframed according to local cultural values through various social processes and performative practices. This talk will begin by providing an overview of the public and private contexts in which jazz has been heard since the end of formal apartheid, foregrounding modes of jazz sociability and the ways in which sounds, images and practices associated with jazz globally can assume decidedly local forms and resonances. Among the latter, I argue that the South African jazz stokvel, or appreciation society, merits considered attention.
Hidden Heritages (MATTHEW TEMPLE)
Matt Temple will address barriers to South Africa's musical heritages, access options, copyright and provide transparent examples of commercial reissue economics.
On working with Mbizo Johnny Dyani (EMMANUEL ABDUL-RAHIM and LOUIS MOHOLO-MOHOLO)
Two master drummers from different continents come together to discuss their close working relationships with South African bassist Johnny Mbizo Dyani (1945-1986). LOUIS MOHOLO-MOHOLO and Johnny Dyani began performing together as part of the Blue Notes in their native South Africa in the early 1960s. Having established themselves as key figures in the development of modern jazz in South Africa, Dyani and Moholo-Moholo continued to work together in a number of groups during their European exile – The Blue Notes, The Brotherhood of Breath, The Chris McGregor Group, Spirits Rejoice and the Steve Lacy Quartet – and as such helped to radically reconfigure European jazz. EMMANUEL ABDUL-RAHIM was born in Harlem and made several influential records with the Latin Jazz Quintet (under his father’s name, Juan Amalbert), before joining Duke Ellington’s band in the mid-1960s. Of Ellington’s 1967 recordings with Abdul-Rahim, critic Norman Weinstein wrote: ‘Jaywalker was the first time I really heard a Duke recording with a superb percussionist who was obviously sophisticated in his knowledge of African rhythms.’ Adbul-Rahim and Dyani later formed a close musical relationship whilst they were both living in Scandinavia and together toured the Netherlands in a series of concerts organized by Aryan Kaganof.
Roundtable (EMMANUEL ABDUL-RAHIM, DARIUS BRUBECK, LOUIS MOHOLO-MOHOLO, HAZEL MILLER, BRETT PYPER, MATTHEW TEMPLE [facilitator, Jonathan Eato])
Six key cultural practitioners take part in this roundtable discussion to pick up and develop the emerging themes of the day. What are the challenges, threats and opportunities regarding artistic heritage in post-authoritarian, post-censorship societies? How do informal or underground knowledge transfer structures facilitate and shape artistic modes of resistance? What is the role of the artist in exile? How can we best listen to musicians in order to inform our education systems, cultural industries, and historical narratives.
Unheard Music, Unseen Images: recordings and photographs from the Ian Bruce Huntley archive (JONATHAN EATO)
Ian Bruce Huntley is not a name that you’ll find readily in the burgeoning annals of South African jazz unless, that is, you talk to the dwindling generation of jazz musicians who were working in South Africa in the mid 1960s. Tete Mbambisa remembers Huntley as the man who recorded ‘our gold’, and this Huntley did, not only through his photographic work, but also by making audio recordings of various gigs and sessions on a Tandberg 6 reel-to-reel tape recorder. Having privately preserved these recordings for over forty years Huntley has concluded a non-profit public good agreement to make these materials freely available for the first time. The project is driven jointly by Huntley and Chris Albertyn, and Albertyn has begun posting the first digitisations of Huntley’s tapes and photographs on the ElectricJive blog. This session will introduce material from the Ian Bruce Huntley archive and consider how – in the face of increasing political oppression – Huntley documented a community of vernacular intellectuals (Farred) exploring and developing ideas in counterpoint to much of the commercially available South African jazz post-‘Pondo Blues’.
The Legacy (ARYAN KAGANOF)
South Africa, 2010 [work in progress], 48 mins
Directed by Aryan Kaganof
Music by Tete Mbambisa, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Kyle Shepherd and Zim Ngqawana
The composers panel at the 2010 IMS-SASRIM Conference (Stellenbosch) featured three South African jazz legends: Tete Mbabmisa, Louis Moholo-Moholo, and Zim Ngqawana. The Legacy is part documentation of that panel, part filmic response by Kaganof to a question from the floor regarding music legacy.
Interpolated with footage from a live performance by Zim Ngqawana and Kyle Shepherd at a scrap yard in Stellenbosch, and an impromptu solo piano performance by Tete Mbambisa, Kaganof’s film deftly exposes questions of musical and political legacy, and various constructions of musical and cultural identity in twenty-first century South Africa.
Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim is a master percussionist, composer, author, arranger, orchestrator, adjuster, educator, and master sound recording engineer. He is perhaps best known for recordings under his own name, and those he made under his father’s name, Juan Amalbert, notably with the Latin-Jazz Quintet (see Caribé rec.1960 featuring Eric Dolphy, and Hot Sauce 1960/61). Abdul-Rahim’s close musical affinity with Duke Ellington on the recordings they made in the late 1960s was noted by Norman Weinstein in his review of The Jaywalker for All About Jazz: ‘The empathy between Abdul-Rahim on conga drums and Ellington on piano is as imaginative as anything you'll find in Ellington's output during these years. What Chano Pozo was to Dizzy Gillespie, Abdul-Rahim might have been to Ellington, had they had a longer musical relationship.’
Amongst the artists that Abdul-Rahim has performed and worked with are the Count Basie Orchestra, the Slide Hampton Orchestra, the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, Thad Jones’ Eclipse Orchestra, John Coltrane, Jesper Johanson, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Jimmy Jones, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillispie, James Moody, Roy Haynes, Johnny M'Bizo Dyani, Shirley Scott, Sir Roland Hanna, Horace Parlan, Kenny Barron, Steve Berrios, Eddie Gladden, Joe Newman, Bob Cranshaw, Randy Brecker, Eric Dolphy, Don Shirley, Ahmad Jamal, Jerome Richardson, Bill Ellington, Ernie Wilkins Almost Big Band, Bent Jaedig, Richard Boone, Clark Terry, Sarah Vaughn, Miriam Makeba, Alice Babs, Josephine Baker, Aretha Franklin, Irma Franklin, Jackie "Mom" Mabley, Lloyd Price, The Four Tops, Dinah Ross, Esther Williams, Jimmy Cliff, and Marion Marlow.
Abdul-Rahim is an advocate of the Schillinger System and has taught at Denmark’s Royal Conservatory of Music, the Danish Jazz Conservatory, and the Odense Conservatory of Music. He has worked on several music projects for film, television and dance.
Darius Brubeck is a pianist, electronic keyboard player, and educator; son of Dave Brubeck. He began learning music as a child, took up trumpet at the age of ten, and in summer 1962 studied composition with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen School of Music; he read liberal arts at Wesleyan University (1965–9) and later had piano lessons with John Mehegan (1972) and Jack Reilly (1980–82). After graduation he taught at the Connecticut Center of Higher Education, and from 1971 to 1976 he led the Darius Brubeck Ensemble with Perry Robinson, Jerry Bergonzi, and his brother, the drummer Dan Brubeck, as his sidemen. During this period he toured internationally and recorded with Two Generations of Brubeck (1972–6), in which he played alongside his father, his brother, Bergonzi, and Robinson. He continued to work with his father in the New Brubeck Quartet (1976–8), which toured South Africa (1976–7) and recorded at the Montreux International Jazz Festival (1977). Later he collaborated with his brother in Larry Coryell & the Brubeck Brothers (1978–9) and as the leader of Gathering Forces (1978–80).
In 1982 Brubeck moved to South Africa, where he founded a jazz program at the University of Natal in Durban; he served first as an associate professor of jazz studies and in 1989 he was appointed director of the university’s Centre for Jazz and Popular Music. During this time he remained active as a musician. From 1989 he co-led, with Victor Ntoni, the Brubeck/Ntoni Afro Cool Concept, in which he played alongside Barney Rachabane and Lulu Gontsana; after the bass player Bongani Sokhela had replaced Ntoni in 1993 the group was known as Darius Brubeck & Afro Cool Concept. In addition Brubeck led Gathering Forces II and Gathering Forces III (from 1997), in which his sidemen included Airto Moreira (in England, 1994), Zim Ngqawana, the saxophonist Chris Merz, and the bānsuri player Depak Ram. Between 1983 and 1995 he presented radio shows for the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
In 2005, he retired from full-time teaching and moved to London. Since then, he has led the UK based Darius Brubeck Quartet and toured with his brothers as "Brubecks Play Brubeck". He was awarded two Fulbright grants to teach in Turkey (2007) and Romania (2010). The University of KwaZulu-Natal has appointed him an Honorary Professor and he continues to visit and perform in South Africa every year.
[adapted from Gary W. Kennedy’s entry for Grove Music Online]
Jonathan Eato is a composer and saxophone player, and teaches in the department of music at the University of York. His compositions range from work on site-responsive promenade performance pieces such as The Look of the Thing for Hannah Bruce and Company to contemporary orchestral music (Bling Bling Balaam was recorded by Luxembourg Sinfonietta in 2006). He has written several scores for Jacky Lansley Dance Theatre and together with Craig Vear formed the improvising duo ev2 in order to explore the gaps between notated and improvised performance practices.
From 2007-2008 Jonathan held a postdoctoral research post at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, during which time he studied South African jazz performance practices. In 2012 he formed JISA Records with Tete Mbambisa to release Mbambisa’s album Black Heroes. http://ev2.co.uk/jisa/records/
Aryan Kaganof ® is a project of African Noise Foundation. His work in film has garnered considerable international acclaim: Western 4.33 won Best Documentary at the 1st Africa and The Islands International Film Festival (Réunion), Best Video Made in Africa at the 12th Milan Festival of African Cinema, and was an Official Selection at the Berlinale Forum, whilst Shabondama Elegy was winner of the Golden Calf Special Jury Prize at the Grand Prix of Dutch cinema. Wasted (1996) was the first film in the world to be shot on digital video and boosted up to 35mm, and SMS Sugarman (2008), the first full-length feature film to be entirely shot with mobile phone cameras, was selected for the British Film Institute’s 2010 South African Cinema season. Kaganof has also published several novels, various volumes of poetry, is a fine artist, and a prolific blogger at Kagablog
In reviewing his 2005 poetry collection Jou Ma Se Poems, Michelle McGrane described Kaganof as a ‘one-man cultural industry, producing paintings, books, clothes, films, music, photographs, and criticism’. Kaganof’s film work is no less diverse, and is always challenging. Stephanus Muller, director of the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) in Stellenbosch, has described Kaganof’s films as ‘not only exemplary acts of documentation of South African music, but the most exceptional intermedial engagement with music of all genres by a South African artist.’
Kaganof has just completed work on An Inconsolable Memory, a story of the Eoan Group that combines rare archival footage of District Six and Eoan’s performances with interviews. Kaganof’s DVD catalogue can be downloaded here.
Hazel Miller established Ogun Records in London in 1973 with her husband, South African bassist Harry Miller, and Keith Beal. By 1998 it had issued 30 LPs and 13 CDs. The repertory consists mainly of free jazz and improvised music. Much of the material is by expatriate South Africans, notably by members of the Brotherhood of Breath and the Blue Notes, but the company has also recorded British musicians such as Trevor Watts, Evan Parker, and SOS and the work of some European players (including Irène Schweizer) and Americans. Ogun released a number of albums Harry Miller made as the leader of his own group, Isipingo, which featured the playing of Louis Moholo-Moholo and Keith Tippett. In 1992 the label recorded Spirits Rejoice (Ogun 101) by The Dedication Orchestra – a 20-piece ensemble formed from two generations of British-based improvisers, among them Kenny Wheeler, Paul Rutherford, Parker, Tippett, Moholo-Moholo, and Django Bates – that celebrated the massive contribution made to jazz by expatriate South African musicians who were forced into exile in the early 1960s. Proceeds from the sale of this album, and the follow up Ixesha, were used to establish the Blue Notes Memorial Trust Bursary for Jazz, a fund to help support and nurture young musical talent in South Africa.
[adapted from Simon Adams’ entry for Grove Music Online]
Louis Moholo-Moholo grew up in a musical family and took up drums in 1956 to play in a big band. In 1962 he joined the Swinging City Six, led in Cape Town by the tenor saxophonist Ronnie Beer, and the following year he became a member of Chris McGregor’s Blue Notes. He moved to Europe with the group, which performed at the Festival Mondial du Jazz Antibes–Juan-les-Pins in France (1964), held residencies at Swiss clubs (1964–5), and traveled to London (1965). Moholo recorded with Roswell Rudd in The Netherlands (1965), toured Britain, Italy, and South America with Enrico Rava and Johnny Dyani in a quartet led by Steve Lacy (1966), and on a brief visit to New York worked with Rudd, John Tchicai, and Archie Shepp. In 1967 he rejoined McGregor and at the end of the decade became a member of the pianist’s Brotherhood of Breath, with which he recorded several albums. He also played in Dudu Pukwana’s groups Assagai (recording in 1971–2) and Spear (recording in 1973), Mike Osborne’s trio (with Harry Miller, recording in 1974–5), and Miller’s group Isipingo (recording in 1977); during the same period he recorded with Elton Dean’s small groups, Dean’s Ninesense, and other groups under Pukwana’s leadership. In 1979 he again visited the USA, as a member of a trio with Peter Brötzmann and Miller.
Moholo-Moholo led the groups Spirits Rejoice (with British musicians – not to be confused with the South African group of the same name, formed in Johannesburg in 1976), African Drum Ensemble, Culture Shock, and Viva La Black, and he recorded as a leader; in duos with Keith Tippett (1980), with Irène Schweizer at a festival in Zurich (1986), and with Cecil Taylor at a festival in Berlin (1988); and in cooperative small groups with Brötzmann and Miller, Tippett, Schweizer, Chris McGregor and Pukwana, Derek Bailey, and others. In 1987, again with Dean, he was a member of Dennis Gonzalez’s Dallas–London Quintet, and in 1991 he toured the USA and recorded in Texas in a quintet which included Gonzalez, Carlos Ward, and Paul Rogers. In 1992 and 1994, as the only surviving member of the Blue Notes, he played in an all-star group, the Dedication Orchestra, which recorded pieces associated with Moholo-Moholo and his fellow South African musicians. Moholo-Moholo’s style is reminiscent of that of Elvin Jones but is imbued with rhythms that are distinctively South African.
[Charles de Ledesma & Barry Kernfeld, Grove Music Online]
Brett Pyper is a South African cultural practitioner, music researcher and academic. He began his career as an arts administrator and facilitator of developmental music projects during the transition from apartheid before taking up a Fulbright scholarship to study in the US, where he was based for six years. He holds Master’s degrees from Emory University in Atlanta (in Interdisciplinary Studies, focusing on Public Culture) and New York University (in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies), and is currently completing a doctoral dissertation on contemporary jazz culture in South Africa.
Between 2005 and 2007, he headed the Division of Heritage Studies and Cultural Management in the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg, incorporating the Centre for Cultural Policy and Management.
In August 2007, he was appointed CEO of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (Absa KKNK), one of South Africa’s largest festivals of art, popular and vernacular culture which takes place annually at Easter time in the town of Oudtshoorn in the predominantly Afrikaans-speaking rural Western Cape. He is currently overseeing the broadening of the curatorial, operational and developmental programmes of this non-profit company to incorporate an additional festival, Klein Karoo Klassique (classical music, regional fine art, food and wine) and Kontreikuns (various arts education, audience development and community development programmes).
As an academic, he was founding Chair of the South African Society for Research in Music, which was formed out of the merger of the former Southern African Musicological Society and the Ethnomusicology Symposium associated with the International Library of African Music. He also serves on the steering committee of the Arterial Network, South Africa.
Matt Temple runs Matsuli Music, an independent record label specializing in reissues of original South African afro-jazz. Born in South Africa and exiled during the late 1980s he has been promoting and playing eclectic sounds since the early 1980s. He has produced and promoted concerts for Amampondo, Malombo Jazz, Thomas Mapfumo and Sipho Mabuse and played with the afro-punk band Four Horsemen. To pay the bills he has a full time job in the IT sector.
GETTING TO YORK
By Rail
York is on the main East Coast Line from London King's Cross to Edinburgh. Fast trains leave from both north and south at frequent intervals. There is also a direct service across the Pennines between York, Leeds and Manchester Airport. The University is two miles from the railway station and you will need to get a bus or taxi onto campus.
An online rail timetable is available to help you to plan your journey.
By Coach
You can reach York by coach from many destinations around the country. National Express buses stop at the railway station. More details are available from their online coach timetable.
By Car
We recommend drivers approach the University from the junction of the A64 and A1079 on the east of the city, from where the University is signposted. For satnav users, the relevant postcode is YO10 5DD.
GETTING TO THE BERRICK SAUL BUILDING
Drivers should park in Campus Central Car Park, which can be found half way along University Road. There is no charge for parking on a Saturday.
If you catch a taxi from the station, please ask for The Berrick Saul Building (Station Taxis know where this is!)
Buses 4 and 44 leave from the train station. You should ask for the University Library (the stop is officially called ‘Morrell Library’).
Bus 4 timetable / Bus 44 timetable (follow ‘vacation time’ sections of timetable).
Delegates arriving by bus to the ‘Morrell Library’ stop should cross the road and walk through the Campus Central Car Park opposite.
From Campus Central Car Park you will be able to see the Berrick Saul, a circular wood and glass multistory building. You should follow the lane that runs from the car park, past the Careers and Student Financial Support Unit building and continue past the no entry / taxi drop off signs. There will be notices to guide you, but The Berrick Saul Building is a two minute walk down this lane.
[page last updated 15 April 2013]